The East London Line extension to Clapham Junction has been given the green light, after negotiations between the Department for Transport and Transport for London were successfully concluded and a £79 million budget agreed.

The project is relatively straightforward and therefore, the projected completion date is 2012, in time for the Olympics. Provision for a new station at Surrey Canal Road is included but construction of the station is subject to a review by TfL.

Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, said: “I am delighted that a long hard slog of negotiations between ourselves and the Department of Transport has borne fruit that will result in a superb new service for thousands of Londoners.”

Brockley residents will be able to get to Clapham Junction by changing at Surrey Quays.

A few people have expressed regret that they have decided not to reopen East Brixton station on the ELL2 line.

ELL2 is simply utilising a line that was closed in the early 20th century, there is little land preparation to be done, the embankments and cuttings are still in place but obviously they have to lay new line and put in new points etc etc. Instead of Old Kent Rd station they are building Surrey Canal Road station a few hundred metres away and the new line will run through the old East Brixton station which closed in 1976.

There does seem to be quite a jump between Denmark Hill station and clapham with nothing in between. A stop at Brixton seems logical.

@Tamsin - the river crossing cancellations are indeed very disappointing, but they are much wider problems for the whole of east (and particularly south east) London. My point is that of the main transport projects underway in London at the moment:

CrossrailThameslinkDLR expansionELL1ELL2

All but one of these will directly benefit Brockley commuters. Even Crossrail will bring pretty big benefits to this area as it will take a lot of the strain off the Jubilee Line.

So, on that basis, I think our cup can be said to be more than half full.

Even Crossrail's pretty good for us as the ELL will once again pass through Whitechapel and Crossrail will go through somewhere near there (Liverpool St?) if memory serves, which will mean easier access to Heathrow etc

The Sydenham Society went into the whole matter in great detail with existing and proposed new time-tables, having their own public meeting and effectively highjacking the one held in Goldsmiths as well. The result of the works will, as I understood them to be say, be fewer trains to certain central stations on the line that goes through Brockley and New Cross Gate. And for those in New Cross Gate in particular, already linked in to the docklands by the existsing ELL, it was extremely galling to be told by all the bodies concerned that they were busy doing wonderful things for our area and we should sit up and be grateful when what we were actually being dished up with was two years plus total disruption (pity the poor students and school children affected for whom this is a hugely significant timespan) with negative benefit at the end of it.(Sorry, Nick, my cup usually isn't so empty - but there was a lot of aggravation on this that I picked up second hand.)

Ah, OK -seems either my memory was just wrong or they've changed the plans - I thought the overall frequency went up on central section with ELL2, but down on each of the spurs - but they do seem to be just adding 4 an hour to Clapham.

No direct interchange at Whitechapel to Crossrail but it won't be very far down the road, Whitechapel station is going to be where Bishopsgate Good Yard used to be isn't it? Which is only a stone's throw from Liverpool St

It would certainly be great to get a Thameslink stop at Crofton Park. I always thouight it was crap that it stops at so many places as it crawls through north London, yet once it's hit London Bridge it basically whisks through south London without a single stop (I suppose unless you include the E&C, Herne Hill side)

Crofton Park will go on to the Thameslink from March this year. For a while they will wont stop at Blackfriars, City Thameslink or Farringdon but they will go to St Pancras and then on to Kentish Town, Hampstead etc etc Luton, St Albans

At anonymous 18.50 - and after it opens again it will no longer be the start of the line so we can't sit in the relative comfort of the train and wait for it to start and we probably wont even get seats!

Is Surry Canal road in or out? I think it's subject to a businesses case, so has to prove whether it;s worth it. I drive past there when on the way to the reclamation site. The developments there would really beneifit from a station.

Nice tip on using your phone to get platforms though, I used that at London Bridge today, about 10 mins before the boards showed the platform for the train I was on. I had seats next to me free for most of that!

Crofton Park, Nunhead, Peckham, Denmark Hill, Elephant and Castle, Blackfriars, as present. Guess it will still stop at those places after March, is just it will go to St Pancras instead of Blackfriars (see Crofton Park Ranger above)

"Provision for a new station at Surrey Canal Road has been included in the scheme. Construction of the station will be developed as part of the regeneration scheme for the area and will be dependent on a further value for money assessment that TfL is currently carrying out."

...and service frequency...

"It will provide four trains an hour in each direction between Dalston Junction and Clapham Junction calling at all stations en route"

Problem is with the Thameslink line from Crofton Park is that Thameslink or whatever the company is called these days has pretty much cut the service across London at weekends when it is of most use to me. So basically Thameslink trains terminate at London Bridge and then you have to get on the Underground to St Pancras and then back on Thameslink again at the other side. I use Thameslink to head back to my parents' place north of London, so without the service across London, this new stop is of little use.

London Overground as far as I know. In fact Tube maps in central London already show interchanges to London Overground at certain stations. The idea, I thought, was to creat an outer loop round London by linking up with existing lines at Highbury and Islington and from Wimbledon round West London

During the halcyon days when the Thameslink trains stopped at CP before, they went straight from Blackfriars through the Snow Hill tunnel to City Thameslink, Farringdon and King's Cross, then onto St Albans etc. Looks like the new trains will do much the same, but via St Pancras International and not stopping at Moorgate.

Don't forget that we are also going to get direct Victoria services from Crofton Park once the current Victoria-London Bridge via Peckham Rye service is discontinued. Presumably these will stop at Clapham High Street, Wandsworth Road and Battersea Park also.

"During the halcyon days when the Thameslink trains stopped at CP before, they went straight from Blackfriars through the Snow Hill tunnel to City Thameslink, Farringdon and King's Cross, then onto St Albans etc. Looks like the new trains will do much the same"

"It has always seemed odd to me that they kept New Cross as well as NXG. They are only about 5 mins apart. I wonder if it has been kept to allow future expansion further than just one stop?"

My understanding is that whilst an extension to Lewisham at least would be ideal, there isn't enough track space without a reduction in mainline train services.

Knowing that, I would suggest that the reason New Cross was kept was so that the project wouldn't have to go through the extremely cumbersome process involved to remove a service, which could have scuppered the entire project.

Addtionally, although New Cross is pretty close to New Cross Gate, remember that the tube served all of Deptford and St John's as well as New Cross, so had that been lost, it would have meant an extra 6/7 minute walk to NXG on top of what is often a 10/15 minute walk home, so making the public transport option just that little bit more unattractive.

They are basically only building a few hundred yards of new track. And although there will be four trains per hour rather than the current 2, they will go to less useful places.

I frequently travel to London Bridge or Victoria. I have no desire, ever, to go to Dalston.

Moreover, they are not building the new station at Surrey Canal Road yet, they won't be making the existing stations fully accessible and - worst of all - there will be no new stations at Brixton or Loughborough Junction, even though the track passes right over the existing stations that are already there.

Basically it is an 'improvement' done on the cheap which won't really improve very much to services round here. A bit like ELL1 really.

If, however, you live where BoJo lives you've got the gold platformed, diamond encrusted escalators of Crossrail coming to a street near you soon .....

Anon you're probably right about the surry canal station, but otherwise that's way too miserable way to look at it. Of course there's not much work being done, that's why it's cheap and being done so quickly. No one's pretending it's crossrail. But the point is that it will create be the last link to build a complete loop of london, like the circle line. It's a nice new option for commuters, nothing more, nothing less.

Ell1 on the other hand is a serious, frequent mass transit system that will be a huge bonus for brockley.

We in South London need to be under no illusion that Boris is not here for us. He is there for those that voted for him. The only thing we can do is hang on, hope that he doesn't do too much damage and make sure he is voted out at the next election.